Generally today's Tattoo Artists use small cylindrical plastic ink cups to hold different color inks for applying a tattoo. The ink cups come in a few different sizes. A large ink cup is approximately the size of a sewing thimble. A medium ink cup is approximately one half the size of a large ink cup and a small ink cup is approximately one half the size of a medium.
When using ink cups Tattoo Artists use an ink cup holder. Often ink cup holders are made from rectangular blocks of Plexiglas with holes bored into them to accommodate the ink cups. Other ink cup holders are made from plastic, metal and other materials. One common factor with all ink cup holders is that they are reused over and over for applying tattoos.
A problem with reusing ink cup holders is the possibility of body fluid transference. A risk factor is, ink cup holders are reused for multiple tattoos on multiple people on a daily basis. Traces of ink and or blood as well as other body fluids could remain on an ink cup holder from one person to the next.
Properly sanitizing the ink cup holder between tattooing different people is a must but does not always happen. The small bores or voids for holding the ink cups are difficult to sanitize properly. Sometimes proper care is not taken to be sure that a tool such as an ink cup holder is sanitized. The ink cup holder is given a quick wipe and it's on to the next tattoo.
In today's increasing commercialization of Tattooing there are vital concerns about transference of body fluids from person to person. Concerns such as AIDS, Hepatitis and other diseases are increasing exponentially with Tattooing.
A prior art solution called the Original Ink Tray is found in Skin ART magazine December/January 2009 issue # 124 on page 17.
The prior art solution in Skin Art December/January issue 124 is not a good solution for a few reasons. The Original Ink Trays are sold as disposable. How ever they tend to be expensive and this might keep a Tattoo Artist from throwing them away after each tattoo, resulting with the original problem. Another problem with the Original Ink Tray is that they are not ink cup holders. The ink cups are integral and are about twenty four molded onto the Original Ink Tray. Therefor Tattoo Artist have no choice of how many ink cups or sizes of ink cups. For some tattooing Tattoo Artists use only one or two ink cups per tattoo. So using one or two ink cups on the Original Ink Tray that has twenty four integral ink cups will cause the tattoo artist to reuse it on another customer and possibly a third or fourth.
Yet another problem with the Original Ink Tray is the large circular pattern that the integral ink cups are arranged. When tattooing, a tattoo gun with needles is held like a writing instrument. When the Tattoo Artist needs more ink on the needles he or she generally will rest the side of their hand next to the ink cups to stabilize the hand while dipping the needles into the ink cups. In this aspect the circular pattern is problematic. In order to reach the far ink cups the artist would either float their hand above unsupported or rest their hand on top of other integral ink cups. Floating the hand above unsupported while dipping needles could result in damage to needles if needle points were bumped against the side of an ink cup. So Tattoo Artists would tend to rest their hand for support on top of other integrated ink cups. Resting the hand on top of other ink cups would cause different color inks and body fluids on the side of the Tattoo Artists hand to be mixed in with the inks that the hand was resting on.
It would be advantageous to provide a single use ink cup holder and hand tray that would be replaced for each and every tattoo for sanitary purposes.
It would also be advantageous to provide an area with a variety of hole sizes of sufficient diameters to accommodate different sized ink cups used for Tattooing.
It would further be advantageous to provide a hand tray area where a Tattoo Artist can stabilize and rest his or her hand while accessing any of the ink cups that were put into the holder.